Monday, February 10, 2003		Feature

Bat Bet on Net
Peeyush Agnihotri

THE cricket mega-event excitement has wormed its way round the globe. Everyone, in India, too, is eating cricket, sleeping cricket and hoping to drink it too, from the acquired-by-India World Cup. When World Cup is here, can betting be far behind. We leave the illegal aspect to the bookies operating from downtown, shanty shops and much-frequented roadside nooks. Legally, betting is on through the Net. While players are busy on field rewriting statistics, bookies and punters are going to the Net for updating their bet. Those placing a bet are asked to enter username and password that is required each time the Net punter logs on to a betting site. This gives strict private access to the account, guaranteeing security. Once the onsite form is filled, the surfer submits it and pays opening deposit using the chosen currency to activate the account for betting.

Some countries have made sports betting legal. To illustrate, UK law levies a tax of 9 per cent on all betting in Great Britain. However, the Internet has enabled some bookmakers to set up offshore sites, where this tax law does not apply. Most of them have their offices and servers at places in the Caribbean, Gibraltar, Antigua, Kahnawake, Australia, Costa Rica and Grenada.

Most of the sites operate 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. There are a number of methods for depositing money into the account: bank cheques, telegraphic transfers, via the Internet, phones or good old credit cards.

Websites have already rated the team, players, bowlers and batsmen. The site, bet365, a UK licensed betting and gaming group that claims to handle over 2,50,000 wagers per week, tells about the ratings.

Not only are sites offering bets of 8/1 or 500/1, they are announcing prizes worth £ 50,000 too to name the best of the players. Pick up 11 players who will perform best during the six-week tournament and win the amount promised at dreamteamfc.com. The site is PIN (personal identification number) protected. Another site, oddschecker.com, offers WAP service to let the punters know what’s the latest on the betting front. Check the best odds on your mobile phone whether travelling or waiting for the match to begin and bet. All one needs to do is to go to the site, pay up and call up the site gateway. The site even specialises in Indian cricket betting. "Lots of bookmaker specials on India. You can find the best odds, compare prices, check odds history, view price differences, see market movers and instantly place bets. We’ve got the biggest and best combination of bookies and markets anywhere," that’s what oddschecker says.

The latest craze to have hit the Net punters is spread betting. Like Sukhjit, a Surrey-based NRI, who has placed his spread bet on Indian player, Virender Sehwag. Most of the sites are backing Indian batsmen, like Tendulkar and Sehwag, while no Indian bowlers are being projected on betting sites by bookies.

Spread betting differs from traditional fixed odds betting in the way that one can back teams or individuals to perform well or badly. It gives punters the chance to take the views of bookmaker including betting against a team (or a person) without nominating who will beat it or him as the case may be. Even if the outcome is apparent, the sites offer a price on just by how much will a team win, when will the next wicket fall or how many runs will be scored in the session. The list is endless.

There is a separate betting zone at cricketbets.com. The cricket portal offers gifts, including pens, lighter, T-shirts and a free trip abroad for points accumulated. Sites like www.cricket-world-cup-betting.com are even offering tabulation of how various betting sites have rated the participating countries with the best bets highlighted in red.

A cyber café in-charge here in this region tells that though betting through Net has become a big craze abroad yet just a handful of punters in India prefer to go online to bet. The main reason is the recent match-fixing scandal and poor Internet infrastructure in India, besides a bit of scepticism on how the whole thing works through the Internet

Bookies, too, are critical about the Net bet. "Where is the need to go through the pangs of going to the Net, getting PIN numbers, punching credit card details et al when everything is available online?" a Chandigarh-based ‘better’ enquires. Even confides that, offline, rates are better, at least for the Indian players. "Offline India stands at a rate of 13/1 whereas online its 8/1," he says.

On-ground bookies and punters, may pooh pooh at the very idea of betting through WWW but they are taking the latest technology seriously and have loaded themselves with mobile phones and PCs to store all information (Press Ctrl + Alt + Del, in case of a raid). They, however, contend that the future of betting may lie in routers in the 2007 World Cup.

There has been a Net impact on the betting scene this World Cup. The Internet may not replace the bookies, but it is an alternative channel for both, checking the odds and placing bets, poor infrastructure, notwithstanding. Where there is will…